Lisa Govro in the teeny-tiny Smalls Tea. Photograph by Thomas Crone
At a quarter past two on Sunday afternoon, Smalls Tea & Coffee moved into the past tense; Cherokee’s micro-tea shop is officially done for business. Not just for the day, but for the forseeable future, as proprietor Lisa Govro moves her brand into more of a production niche, rather than a brick-and-mortar one. But the lateness of the hour on Sunday didn’t stop her from letting in a couple more customers for one last round of her punchy, trademark Fake Coffee.
Govro’s quick to note that the closure isn’t an issue of her business district, which is where many of her regular customers tend to their own businesses and residences. Instead, she says, the wee space wasn’t sufficient for expansion needs. At this point, Govro’s ReTrailer Tea brand has about 20 customers throughout St. Louis, and her physical trailer is still a weekly presence at the Tower Grove Farmers Market. Her hope is to commit to a production facility by the second quarter of 2015. While that space would feature a tasting room for special occasions, the emphasis would be almost entirely on the production side.
“Yeah, we’re growing and expanding,” Govro says. “Smalls is too small to maintain our growth. We need to get up to code with FDA guidelines with a commercial kitchen facility, with a higher control of quality.”
Noting that the shop’s closure is “bittersweet,” it’s understandable why Govro chose this moment to shutter the teahouse. She’s expecting a child in December. And there’s the matter of getting her Little Cup of Sunshine and Chai concentrates into wider markets than the area coffee shops that currently stock her brand of loose teas.
That said, she believes that her shop served a market in the still-evolving Cherokee arts and business district. While unsure of what types of businesses have been inquiring of the space through owner Jason Deem, she notes “all of the build-out is customized to the room. Hopefully, it’s a coffee shop or similar business that can utilize this space.”
Whatever business will move in, it’ll have to deal with one of the most-unique storefronts in the whole region, with a width of six-feet and a shotgun style that allows for minimal seating and storage space. Still, the room’s got a definite, stylish and quirky appeal.
(In fact, the space’s visual appeal was well suited for video. To wit, Bill Streeter featured musician Ryan Spearman at the venue, as part of his Lo-Fi Cheorkee series. And here’s a clip from the South Side of Luck video series featuring Smalls from earlier this year.)
While serving up her last teas to the public at the shop—working around her young niece, who was planted atop the check-out counter—Govro stressed more than once that the business is simply morphing. While she’ll miss the daily interactions with customers, she feels that the organic brand of ReTrailer Teas can grow beyond those already predisposed to a holistic lifestyle. And therein lies the new challenge.
“We’re preparing to take over the world,” she says, with tongue in cheek. “But it’s a covert mission. People will have no idea they’re drinking something so healthy.”
Stlmag.com’s Dining blog covered the Smalls opening in February; check that out here.
